Separated At BirthHT Blog2014-06-09T15:49:48ZWordPresshttp://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/feed/atom/Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/?p=8932014-06-09T15:49:48Z2014-06-09T15:49:48ZVehicles used by hundreds of thousands of people to reach the venue of Chandrababu Naidu’s swearing-in ceremony at a university ground near Guntur bore stickers that said it all: “Babu is Back.” Yes, indeed!

The Telugu Desam leader’s return to power in truncated Andhra while retaining substantial base in Telangana is no less than spectacular. The mammoth turn out at the ceremony attended by BJP big-wigs showed that he isn’t just back. He’s back with a bang.

The wheel actually has come a full circle after Naidu scripted his own defeat in 2004, bringing forward the assembly elections to buck another drought and en-cash politically the naxalite attack on his caravan.

The strategy boomeranged, lending his estranged friend and bête noire, YSR Rajasekhara Reddy an opening to breach the TDP hold in united Andhra.

The defeat followed by a decade-long oblivion has obviously left Naidu — the face of economic reforms in Andhra — a lot wiser and more balanced in his approach. He had conceded to this writer after losing elections that he erred badly in not addressing agricultural distress by investing in the countryside a part of the extra 40 per cent revenues the State earned from beneficiaries of first generation reforms.

Not the least unusual therefore that the TDP chief’s speech after taking oath was in the nature of a “help me” address to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He needs central assistance to build a new capital, deliver enhanced pensions to widows and old people besides waving loans to farmers, weavers and self-help groups.

The speed with which Naidu cleared files relating to key poll-time promises was reminiscent of his comment after the 2004 debacle. “Trickle down wouldn’t work any more; people want benefits in torrents,” he said.

It was his image as an efficient administrator that had the Andhra middle class choose him over YSR’s son Jagan Mohan. He’d have to deliver fast, both on developing the State and providing the sops he promised his constituents.

And in doing so, the CM has to guard against Jagan, who will be a formidable Opposition in the House, and the BJP’s ambition to expand base in Andhra and Telangana.

The third factor is Pawan Kalyan, the Kappu film star brother of the Congress’s Chiranjeevi whose tie-up with the TDP BJP fetched the latter the Kappu vote to beat back the formidable Reddys who forever are in competition with Naidu’s equally influential Kamma clansmen.

It’s foolhardy to take political marriages for granted. Naidu knows that governance alone can be the antidote to conflicting vested interests that coalesced to give him a winning combine in Andhra. Lost time can for him be a lost opportunity.

That’s why he has sought a three-legged partnership with Modi for populist relief and development in Andhra. There isn’t another way to explain his decision to induct two of the BJP’s four legislators as ministers in the new government.

]]>0Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/?p=8902014-06-03T20:06:15Z2014-06-03T20:05:31ZA defeat in elections is always disheartening. But it’s no excuse to withdraw into a shell or come across as running away from responsibility.

Having promised the people a government at the Centre, the Congress failed to deliver even a robust Opposition in the 16th Lok Sabha. That’s reason enough for the party that ruled India for most parts of its formative years to be back on its feet. For time and tide wait for none!

But the signals aren’t encouraging. Amid sniper fire between Rahul Gandhi’s advisors and their critics has come the appointment of Karnataka MP Mallikarjun Kharge as the Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha.

One can argue that Kharge isn’t a greenhorn parliamentarian. He’s a second-time MP who won nine elections on the trot to the Karnataka assembly, serving as the state’s home minister besides being a consistent claimant to the chief minister’s office.

The political reasoning behind projecting a leader from the south as the party’s face in Parliament is as much valid. Of the four southern states, the Congress has governments in Kerala and Karnataka that together returned 17 of the 44 members it has in the new House.

But in some ways the decision lays bare the Congress high command’s tendency to play safe at a time it should be willing to experiment. Kharge’s elevation hasn’t enthused cadres. They aren’t sure the party’s would be a formidable voice, given its small numbers in the Lower House.

Kharge may well prove skeptics wrong by emulating the late CM Stephen who so deftly held the job after the 1977 polls. The Congress’ post-Emergency rout by the fledgling Janata Party had even Indira and Sanjay Gandhi lose their seats.

Under greater scrutiny than Kharge, however, will be Rahul Gandhi, his party boss who has again come to be seen as a reluctant leader. In perceptional terms, the image could cost him and the Congress the people’s goodwill they need to bounce back.

Rahul indeed has his task cut out outside Parliament to rebuild the Congress organisation in states it once ruled but has since been decimated by the BJP. That brings one to the selection of the septuagenarian Kharge’s deputy in the Lok Sabha.

A younger face – the Congress has a couple of them, including Jyotiraditya Scindia and Shashi Tharoor — could provide the requisite connect between the party in the legislature and on the streets. What the Congress needs today is an ably assisted latter day CM Stephen in Parliament and a Sanjay reincarnate leading the party crowds on the ground.

Difficult no doubt—but doable. That should help as much the BJP in power. As the 19th century British politician-essayist Benjamin Disraeli wrote: “No government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.”

]]>6Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/?p=8852014-05-06T15:41:43Z2014-05-06T15:41:39ZIs there a political narrative to nuggets of information about the BJP’s post-electoral plans to change governors and dislodge precariously-perched regimes in Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand?

Perhaps! Predicated on the presumption of a victory with numbers large enough to effect these changes, the strategy, though questionable in the framework of a federal polity, makes sense from the BJP’s standpoint. Not only does the party hopeful of power, need a strong presence in the Lok Sabha, it requires robust support in the Upper House to make policy, pass legislation.

The best hope for Narendra Modi is in parliamentary elections in provinces where he cannot topple regimes. But gain hold his party would, wherever it can, of state assemblies that send members to the Rajya Sabha.

Poor arithmetic in the House of Elders can confront the BJP with the hurdles it erected for the UPA to block legislation over the past decade. If that happens, its government will be out on a limb like its UPA predecessor.

Regardless of its strength in the Lower House, legislative logjams in the RS could unravel sooner than later Modi’s painstakingly cultivated image of a strong administrator.

Gubernatorial changes, if at all, might have to precede the BJP’s bid to prop up leaderships in existing houses or force fresh elections. While assemblies in Bihar and Uttarakhand might see permutations and combinations de novo, Delhi and Jharkhand, that is due for elections next year, could have new Houses.

Governors play a crucial role when assemblies are in suspended animation or are effecting leadership changes, including election of new speakers. If it comes to power, the BJP-NDA would have to move cautiously on that front; more so when a 2010 Supreme Court judgement placed checks on arbitrary removal of governors.

Its assertions of change of guard in some states ruled by rival parties are expected to embolden the electorate there to vote without fear of retribution by local regimes in the ongoing parliamentary polls. Elections are over in Jharkhand but polling is due in Uttarakhand and 13 remaining seats of Bihar.

But such mind-gaming works only in provinces with fragmented Houses; not where ruling dispensations have decisive numbers. That explains the saffron party’s allegations of rigging in UP and West Bengal where the SP and the Trinamool are in control of assemblies. The last two phases will cover 33 seats in UP and 23 in Bengal.

The saffron brigade’s concerns are legitimate, even if exaggerated. State bureaucracies and police do tend to be partial towards provincial regimes. To minimize the local administration’s influence on the poll process, political parties need to make noises of foul play to pressure the Election Commission to make effective deployment of para-military forces. That’s what the BJP has done.

It’s another matter that no party is above such attempts to manipulate elections.

]]>0Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/2014/04/21/tale-of-three-holy-cities/2014-04-21T15:54:31Z2014-04-21T15:54:31ZWhat’s common between the country’s foremost holy cities: Amritsar, Mathura and Varanasi? The Dickensian search for a life of quality, the over-riding urge to get past years of neglect and low existence.

Their contemporary story could qualify to borrow its title from Dickens’ epic 19th century work A Tale of Two Cities. Its protagonists like Dickens’ would be from among peasants, traders and the working class tormented by poor social and economic conditions.

The scramble for votes in these ancient centres of worship is led by high-profile candidates: Arun Jaitley and Capt Amarinder Singh in the city of the Golden Temple; Hema Malini and Jayant Chaudhary in Lord Krishna’s birthplace; Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal and the Congress’s Ajay Rai in Kashi.

A strong anti-incumbency against the Centre and the SP regime in UP makes Modi’s development mantra resonate in Mathura and Varanasi. The cities are afflicted with paucity of drinking water, power outages, overflowing drains, mountains of accumulated garbage, bumpy roads and negligible civic facilities.

Bare subsistence! That’s what life is about in Mathura where Hema banks on Modi’s gravitational pull. Her Bollywood lure dulled by a diffident campaign, the actor’s celebrity status could be negated by her RLD rival’s Jat lineage resting on his grandfather Charan Singh’s formidable legacy.

The contours of the triangular contest in Varanasi will be clearer after Modi visits the town to file nomination.

But in Amritsar, Jaitley has three adversaries: Amarinder’s formidable challenge; tangible public anger against Akali strongman Bikram Singh Majithia and groundswell of sympathy for sitting MP Navjot Singh Sidhu whom the BJP denied ticket. “People here are feeling lost without him,” said the former cricketer’s wife, Dr Navjot. “Arunji is a tall leader…Yet the way everything happened wasn’t good,” she continued, directing her angst against the Akali leadership.

Odds apart, the BJP’s campaign pitch is logical — that Jaitley is Amritsar’s best bet as a key figure in the likely NDA regime at the Centre. Majithia himself made the point at a village off the Chowk Mehta road: “My sister Harsimrat would become a minister and so would Jaitley. I’ll hold them by their hands to get money for Punjab from the Centre.”

The problem is that a vote for Jaitley has come to be viewed as a vote for the unpopular Akali dispensation. Translated on the ground, the distrust turns the contest as one between Amarinder and Majithia. The latter is randomly accused of patronising extortionists, land grabbers and narcotics peddlers.

For his part, Majithia dismisses the allegations as politically motivated. “We’ll defeat Amarinder here the way my sister defeated his son in Bathinda,” he told this writer. “People may not talk about Modi. But they know that he’s coming. That will get us the floating votes to destroy the Captain’s hype.”

But voices on the streets should worry the BJP. “Captain aa gaya, captain chha gaya,” the crowds sang at a Congress rally. Amarinder’s audience in Amritsar (East) from where Sidhu’s wife is the MLA were responsive to the extent of being raucous.

But the Congress’s booth-level arrangements are way inferior to that of the BJP-Akali combine — whose management of the polls saw them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the 2012 assembly polls.

Another imponderable in the tight contest is the Aam Aadmi Party nominee Daljit Singh, an elderly eye-surgeon who has served the city for half a century. If he polls a hundred thousand or more, Amritsar could be touch and go.

]]>30Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/?p=8822014-03-24T18:28:45Z2014-03-24T18:28:45ZThe BJP expects Muslims to forget the past and move on. Perhaps they should. But has the party done enough to win their trust?

Has the BJP itself moved on? Has it shed the persona that fire-walled it from the country’s largest minority?

These are questions begging for answers in the lead-up to general elections. If it wasn’t in the manner of ‘creating a problem to offer a solution’ that made them look good, the BJP leadership acted wisely to dump Pramod Muthalik within hours of his return to the party.

The Hindutva fringe-king would have discredited Narendra Modi’s youth-centric campaign in Karnataka. He couldn’t have been the voters’ valentine by the side of a ‘moral cop’ with lumpen values. He had to junk Muthalik to remain an attractive suitor!

Politicians try being all things to all people in the election season. Cut the frame to Uttar Pradesh and the scenario changes. While its PM candidate chants the development mantra, the BJP in the key Hindi state facilitates party leaders accused of inciting riots in Muzaffarnagar to fight what they called the minorities’ ‘love jehad’ against Hindu girls.

At least two such leaders were feted at a rally Modi addressed in Agra last November. They left the stage before his arrival. But questions lurked whether the drama could have been enacted without a nod from the top.

Answers have since come with three similarly accused BJP leaders becoming party candidates for the Lok Sabha.

The implications of the electoral face-off now building in western UP and to some extent in its eastern parts bordering Bihar leave little to imagination. The Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh had courted a controversial Muslim cleric in Barielly the day the BJP decorated its religious warriors in Agra.

The SP chief has moved since to contest from Azamgarh to counter Modi’s candidature from Varanasi. The tussle for eastern UP gives one a sense of déjà vu. God forbid, a no-holds-barred contest in the region could replicate the 1990s when fundamentalism of one kind fed on another.

That was when the BJP first took out asthi kalash yatras of people killed in police firing during the Ram Temple movement at Ayodhya; the experiment it repeated late last year in Bihar in remembrance of those killed in blasts at Modi’s Patna rally.

Forked tongues cannot broker social reconciliation. To make people live down memories and move on, the political class must first emerge from the warp of time.

vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com

]]>3Vinod Sharmahttp://http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/separated-at-birth/?p=8702014-03-18T16:02:59Z2014-03-18T16:02:59ZArvind Kejriwal has had a love hate relationship with the media. But lately, it has been hate—and more hate. His threat to jail journalists engaging in unethical practices had the entire political class ranged against him in defense of presspersons.

But the welter of political support the media received was expedient. The effort wasn’t as much to show journalists as lily white as to paint Kejriwal as intolerant and anti-democratic.

In some measure, the AAP leader deserved the derision. But self-righteous indignation isn’t the answer to his allegations. It’ll be equally self-defeating to question his locus in raising the issue. The media’s as much answerable to criticism as other pillars of the State— the executive, parliament and the judiciary.

In fact, a greater responsibility devolves on the media that profiteers to keep its business practices above board. Financial viability is a pre-requisite to ensure an independent media. But that cannot be sought to be achieved by violating the premise on which is predicated the idea of a free press — that honest dissemination of information constructs an empowered opinion to keep democracy robust.

Crudely but rightly, Kejriwal has flagged the media’s questionable business practices that are well known but have never been discussed with the honesty such issues deserve. As they put at risk the media’s basic duty to purvey facts, they could and have already eroded the fundamentals on which is predicated the idea of a free Press!

In some ways, Kejriwal can be compared with Press Council of India chief, Justice Markandey Katju. Both are prone to deploying wrong lexicon to make the right point. The former Judge of the Supreme Court, who has been minding his counsel lately, had arrived with a bang in his new avatar. Among other things, he found the media intellectually deficient to build a public discourse equal to the task of transforming India from a feudal agricultural society to a modern industrial state.

He buttressed his argument by drawing parallels with Europe that–while in a similar transition a few centuries ago — had such influential men informing public opinion as Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and Thomas Paine to name a few. “The (Indian) media has a very important role to play as it deals with ideas, not commodities. By its very nature the media cannot be like an ordinary business.”

Amid such well-meaning interventions, Justice Katju alienated the people from his thoughts by calling them idiots who voted like cattle and sheep on the basis of caste and religion. The sober message got lost; mindless bombast survived.

Likewise, Kejriwal did himself in by threatening journalists. His attack on the media lacked the scholarly core of Katju’s intervention embellished by a strong sense of history. The AAP leader prejudiced his case by allowing himself to be influenced by his personal experiences. He became in the process his own hatchet man against the media.

But for a fair and impartial analysis of the media’s role before and after elections in 21st century India, Kejriwal has to be read in conjunction with Katju, minus their diatribes. Questions the practitioners cannot escape are: Is there smoke without fire; has the media been fair, transparent and objective enough to claim the freedom it has?